This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

Remember the Kinect? There was a magical time when the Kinect was first released, before the debacle of Kinect 2.0, where it seemed like the greatest evolution of the Nintendo Wii motion controls. I won’t lie, I was fully bought in to the original Kinect. I missed the boat on the Nintendo Wii, sure I played Wii sports, but never owned the system, and I have gone on to ignore the frenzy over VR, but the Kinect was my hardware of choice. I wasn’t a complete idiot, I knew that it had limited uses, but I was excited for the stepping stones that could expand on this. I was able to play video games and get a workout in, my wife (girlfriend at the time) loved the dance games that no longer required you having to hold a controller or phone to measure motion. It was something that stayed hooked up for years in my house, because Kinect games were in such a rotation that it never made sense to put it away. Now that time is passed, and Kinect sits in a drawer for when I want to show my kids some of the hits, but lets dust it off and talk about this week’s game, “Kinect Sports.”

Kinect Sports is the spiritual successor to Wii Sports and I can tell you that I think this game still exudes all the excitement that the Kinect initially promised. All the fun everyone had with Wii sports (assuming you had any fun) is back in Kinect Sports, but only if you approach it how it was meant to be played. What I mean is that there are limitations to the technology, and I remember going down the rabbit hole in unlocking achievements where you could break the game fairly easily by navigating those tricks. Knowing how to cheat at the discuss throw, or the secrets to bowling perfect strikes, while can be fun also ruin what I think is the joy of trying to use your body to do these things for real. I felt genuine joy when I won the track and field gold, because I was running my fat ass in place to try and win the sprint and hurdles as if I was really running them. It won’t compare to doing those activities in real life, I don’t think anyone is suggesting that, but playing this game as intended is far more enjoyable then using the camera against the game so you can set world records every time.

There are 6 different sports to pick from (Boxing, Track and Field, Volleyball, Table Tennis, Soccer, and Bowling), multiple mini-games for each sport, multiplayer party modes, and even difficulty selections for each sport. Now how does one actually beat this game for a ranking? Well, I played each sport and beat the “professional” CPU and then played each mini game at least once so that I was up on all the nitty gritty. Granted, I have previously played this game ad nauseum, including getting all the achievements, but that was during previous years. I will briefly talk about each sport, but some might be lighter than others.

Up first, Boxing. Boxing is perhaps my least favorite of these motion sports. You stand in front of the camera swinging your arms to punch or holding them both up to block. Depending on how you swing your arms you can throw jabs, crosses, uppercuts and haymakers which will reflect in the game, with haymakers and uppercuts dealing the most damage, however boxing is more strategy than just swinging wildly. Hitting or being hit 3 times in a row will stagger which will make the person being staggered more vulnerable to damage as well as make their punches weaker. Blocking will grant your next punch swing to do more damage, but not if you get hit before you throw the punch. While you can dodge by moving slightly, outside of ducking some punches being thrown high, you aren’t really going to move side to side to avoid punches. I know I am starting off with my least loved sport of the bunch, but unlike the other sports, I feel the camera has the hardest time tracking you during boxing. Punches can get misread easily, dodging is almost nonexistent, and while the game wants you to play a cat and mouse kind of game, the best strategy is to throw continuous windmill punches until your opponent is knocked down. This was easily tested by “boxing” my 4 yr old son. While I was initially planning on letting him beat me anyway, there is no way to counter someone who doesn’t stop making punching motions. What started as a game I was going to let him knock me down 1 or 2 times, but still make it a close fight, turned into me fighting for my life 3 minutes in. I wasn’t expecting perfection, or some form of real life training to eventually step into the ring, but the whole draw of Kinect was physical movement, and I didn’t feel this really improved on the Wii Sports formula.

Switching from the sport I played the least to the one I played the most, we are moving to Volleyball. Volleyball is played as a 2v2 game, as you play first to 7. While spiking has it’s difficulties, I feel this game does a much better job of tracking what you are doing in the game. If you do a “setting” motion, you will set the ball to your teammate, hitting the ball overhand will try to get it over the net quickly, hoping to take them off guard, and spikes require you to jump and swing with either hand to direct the ball. Granted, the game takes the movement of the character away from you, so you don’t actually have to run to spots on the floor, but the ball tracking seems much improved over something like Boxing. There were many a nights where I played this in the basement, and really selling out for the spikes as if I was doing it in real life, it was a good workout. Volleyball also has the two best minigames for the series. One has you returning shots with called body parts (Heads, hands, or feet) which can be fun and hectic as you get later in the game, and the other game has you trying to avoid objects being hit at you (bowling pins and balls, fruit, etc.). Both of these minigames, mixed with the actual game of volleyball will have you working up a good sweat because they require you to do some quick movements in order to give it an honest go.

Soccer and Table Tennis are both fun, but neither game really shows off the promise of the Kinect. In Soccer the ball pings between players and on defense you have to stand in front of the passing lane, or shot. When on offense, you are given the option to kick the ball in 2 or 3 directions, until you are in position to shoot where you have a little more freeform. While not as hard to read as fast hands in boxing, if you aren’t doing overexaggerated kicks, you might find the ball not travelling where you want it to. You can have some fun, especially playing with others, and its certainly nice to see a sport that we aren’t accustomed to seeing in a motion game, but you can quickly rattle off wins in this game with minimal effort. Table Tennis behaves how you would expect, like a motion controlled game of Pong. There is some nuance here based on how you swing to affect the shot, and poorly timed hits can setup the other player for spikes which are hard to defend. The most comical part of all of Kinect Sports is seeing a highlight of a Table Tennis spike, and seeing your paddle and behavior not match what happened at all.

Alright, final two. Bowling and Track and Field are both great for very different reasons. Bowling is an old staple that now feels even better than it did in previous motion games. You physically have to move left or right to align yourself how you wish, the follow-thru with your arm is important as to how you control spin, and the game reads the speed you do it as power on the ball. Again, this isn’t something you are really going to take to the lanes, but rolling a strike feels good, because you can convince yourself that you had to actually physically do it. As for Track and Field, this was the game that got the most movement out of you. 5 events (Sprint, Javelin, Long jump, Discuss, Hurdles) all of them involved some combination of running, jumping, or throwing which was obviously the point of the Kinect. Now you weren’t just alternating button pushes to run a character faster, or shake a remote to speed a character up, but actually stand up and run in place. In long jump or hurdles you had to time your jump after running. In my replay of this game, I had the most fun with Track and Field. It maybe only lasted 10-15 minutes, but it is the only event that feels like a full event, as other selections are all single games that can end very quickly depending on your skills.

Now this is a loving look back at Kinect Sports, because in order to fulfill the brief of beating this game, I did it in only two sittings. I didn’t have a chance to get sick of the game or struggle with any issues, because I was “finished” far before that point, but that doesn’t make Kinect Sports free from critique. The game has flaws, as did a lot of the Kinect system and other games. For one this game is not accessible for a lot of different people. Even if we ignore the need for an add-on (the Kinect), you would have needed a large play-space to setup the game and play. Much like Ring-Fit after it, this game isn’t really friendly for Apartment dwellers or even people who play games on the 2^nd floor of their house. Adding to that list anyone who have any impairments when it comes to mobility, the elderly, etc. These aren’t necessarily new concerns or issues, and while Microsoft has done wonders in terms of addressing accessibility issues with controllers and games, the Kinect was prior to that time. I am sure these things were taken into consideration, but they had a vision that “your body would be the controller,” so they then couldn’t just map these games to buttons as well, because they weren’t programmed that way.

As with other games launched around the same time as the Kinect, this game was a little lite on content. Sure there were multiple sports to play, mini games, and party modes, but you could essentially see everything in one long play session. While this isn’t much different then Wii Sports, this is nothing short of being classified as a party game. Sure you could play it solo, and by golly, I did, but you had to make your own fun to get that far. I used it to sub for a workout during bad weather days (especially the DLC), and I was big into achievements back in the day and got 100%, however that was me extending the life of a game that didn’t have much life to give. I would fully expect that most people probably played this game only 10 times and that it probably didn’t have the longevity of Wii Sports.

Upon revisiting Kinect Sports, it briefly brought me back to the time when the Kinect was new and exciting. I was younger, I had no kids, and I had a close friend network where these games were no brainers for me. I knew that I would be able to organize a game night in person, and have people come hangout and play Kinect games. Maybe we would play some Bowling, and then switch to Dance Central or Kinect Adventures. Now the gimmick of motion controls has worn off. There might be some exceptions here and there, but it has been decided that when people play games they want to sit on their couch or in their computer chair to play the games, and not clear their living room and jump around. It’s easy to reflect on that time and think that it was obvious that Kinect was going to fail, but at the time I think it was far cloudier.

So what about playing it now? Well it feels more like playing a gimmick now then it certainly did at the time. However, it is still incredibly fun for what it is, and can entertain friends or families for a few hours as everyone gets a turn. Getting everything setup now, is a pain in the ass, as it always was. Clearing the space you need for two people to play at the same time is just as daunting, despite now owning a home instead of a small apartment. I can see the slights the game has in terms of tracking, but if you ignore all of the downsides you can still get a group together and have a fun session. Are you setting up weekly nights to play Kinect, or playing more than an hour at a time? Probably not, and it certainly isn’t in the running for the greatest game of all time, but I could probably argue that this game has aged pretty well all things considered.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: Fun, but No

Where does it rank: Kinect Sports is still fun, and if you can look through some of the technical issues that belong to the Kinect as a piece of Hardware, you can have some real fun. It's niche, and requires you to want to physically move, but its still fun to bowl a strike, spike a volleyball, or score a goal in soccer. It's certainly not the greatest game, but I don't think anyone would ever confuse it for that. I have it ranked as the 59th Greatest Game of All Time out of 154 games. It sits between Pathways (58th) and Super Dodgeball (60th).

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening

Future games coming up (actively playing) 1) Judgement 2) Lonesome Village 3) Catherine